The Historical Record of Hong Kong Typhoons Since the Early Nineteenth Century

This study presents a complete continuous record of all tropical cyclones that impacted the Hong Kong region since 1827, with detailed historical reconstructions and reanalysis conducted up through 1951. Storm counts and intensity analyses were derived that are directly compatible with the Best Track dataset extending up to present day, enabling robust statistical comparisons and linkages to important mechanisms of climate change. Numbers of storm accounts from historical data, mostly in the English language and with detailed sub-daily information, consist of over 1215 from ship logbooks, over 1500 from newspapers, over 685 from early instrumental records, and a small number from diaries and missionary reports. Important archive repositories of historical data include the UK National Archives, US National Archives, the British Library, and the Library of Congress. Tropical cyclone intensities were derived for each storm from pressure-wind relationships, descriptive reports of damage, and wind intensity from the Beaufort scale to the Hong Kong Tropical Cyclone Classification Scale that broadly discriminated tropical storms (severe tropical storms included here), typhoons, severe typhoons, and super typhoons. The results detail the characteristics of 138 storms from 1884-1951, supplementing information known from the Hong Kong Observatory, as well as on 122 storms from 1827-1883 which many of them are newly documented. Results of time series indicate prominent peaks of activity of tropical cyclones centered around the 1850s, 1890s, and 1960s. The most active periods of typhoon activity are generally similar to those for all tropical cyclones, with the exception of the 1870-1905 period exhibiting the most pronounced low activity. El Nino tends to explain some years with lower activity, but decadal variations likely relate most closely to regional changes in SSTs and synoptic circulation patterns. Particular active typhoon years include 1859 and 1923, which had eight and six typhoons respectively. Prominent super typhoons that rank along with the well-known storms of 1937 and 1962 include the typhoons of 1874, 1862, and 1832. Newspaper accounts of storms form the earlier period, however, reveal that fatalities do not exhibit a clear relationship with typhoon intensity.